Fans accuse Adele of ripping off Tom Waits because it was only a matter of time

Post navigation

"Hello," "Martha"

Adele fans have accused the singer of plagiarizing Tom Waits’ 1973 song “Martha”, saying it sounds a lot like her new single “Hello”. Both songs feature a phone conversation between the singer and a former love interest, so fans may be right about this one.

Waits’ lyrics: “Hello, hello there, is this Martha? / This is old Tom Frost, and I’m calling long distance. Don’t worry ’bout the cost, cause it’s been 40 years or more, now Martha please recall / Meet me out for coffee, where we’ll talk about it all.“

Adele’s lyrics: “Hello, it’s me / I was wondering if after all these years / You’d like to meet, go over everything“.

According to Adele’s producer Greg Kurstin, the singer’s new album was inspired by Waits afterall.

“She didn’t want to just go through and write a pop song with any particular formula,” Kurstin told Entertainment Weekly. “We talked about Tom Waits, and different storytellers like that. I think that was the idea, that we wanted to do something that was very honest about where she was at right now, and she wanted to do something that was real and believable.”

I’m not surprised @Adele has been accused of copying @tomwaits. She ripped the title of her last song off of that James Bond movie.